I came back to AMD today!!

[msi1337]

for the longest time I was stuck on owning only prescotts...dont ask me why... I know it wasnt in consideration of my power bill... anyways, so I built myself a new machine...so far its probably the single fastest computer I have used to date.

just wondering what I need to do for overclocking, what if anything I should change?

so it is:

AMD X2 3800+ Dual Core with Retail HSF
Antec SLK3700 case with Enermax 565watt sLI psu
Geil 2x512mb pc3200 memory
160gb seagate sata hard drive
samsung lightscribe dvd-+r
MSI X1800XT 512mb (on order)
dfi ultra sli mobo

I am damn glad I switched to dual core AMD goodness... I felt bad about paying $297 for a processor until I booted the machine up!

 

[Furen]

Here's my opinion...

The two 6600GTs are a waste, I'd go with a faster single card rather than two slower ones (disregard me if you bought them separately and used SLI as a way to upgrade). Also, considering that AM2 came out yesterday I would have gone for that instead of socket 939 (the price is similar enough, in my opinion, and there are some pretty cheap NF5 mobos out there).

 

[msi1337]

the only reason I got dual 6600's was because I had one (which I got for $75 after rebate from a microcenter rebate deal)...then today when I was shopping I saw the exact same card mislabelled $62.27 on clearance...so for $130 I figured..why not pay $10 more for an sli mobo and have two

 

[Absolute0]

if you want to overclock i hope you have a good motherboard that you didn't list
Might want to upgrade the heatsink

 

[Cruise51]

What motherboard are you using?

 

[swtethan]

you paid $300? could have bought a pentium D for the same price and better performance... sorry to burst your bubble


$600 P-D price cut down to $300

 

[A554SS1N]

Originally posted by: swtethan
you paid $300? could have bought a pentium D for the same price and better performance... sorry to burst your bubble


$600 P-D price cut down to $300

And you'd get alot more heat and alot more power consumption with a Pentium-D.... So back to AMD then I guess?

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: swtethan
you paid $300? could have bought a pentium D for the same price and better performance... sorry to burst your bubble


$600 P-D price cut down to $300

Ummm...not really better performance, and certainly much more heat and power.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: Viditor

Originally posted by: swtethan
you paid $300? could have bought a pentium D for the same price and better performance... sorry to burst your bubble


$600 P-D price cut down to $300

Ummm...not really better performance, and certainly much more heat and power.

The heat and power argument is superfluous. While Pentium Ds run hotter and take up more power than Athlon 64 X2s, they do not do it to such a factor that one is forced to ignore it's superior overclocking capability.

While in the end, a Pentium D 805 and a good overclocking motherboard would perform better than the above X2 solution, it is still necessary to understand that the X2 solution is still a very fast setup.


You should be able to overclock your X2 3800+ moderately well on the stock cooler, perhaps to 2.4-2.5Ghz. You could also try an after market cpu cooler. As to which one is the best, you will have to do some research.

 

[piroroadkill]

Personally, I would have gone for 2x 1GB sticks...

 

[Lord Banshee]

most of these CPUs can do 2.4 on stock voltage (well the last 3 AMDs i bought could)

i would first set you HT to 4x (this is like the FSB but for amd it doesn't really give you any performance increase by overclocking it, so it will be 4 times your LDT.

Set your LDT to around 240 ( this is your cpu clock so this wil be 240 time your multiplier which for the 3800 it is 10 so you get a cpu clock of 2400)

Now because mostly your ram can not run at 240Mhz or 480DDR you have to set your FSB ratio/DRAM ratio something like that to 5/6 or also know as 166Mhz. So this will make your ram run around 240 times (5/6) = 200.

This should get your started.. i would test DUAL Prime 95 and/or DUAL SuperPI 32M, i also like S&M Stress test.

If this working you probally have some run left if you start changeing the voltage or you could also have some room left with out changeing the voltage. This is were time kicks in and you have to do alot of Trial and error.

But for me my Opteron 165 will not get much higher than 2.6GHz no matter what voltage i give it, but some people get 3.0GHz with little voltage bump. So have fun and always double check to make sure your HTT the (4x time clock) is never too much over 1000 and your Ram stays around 200Mhz after the ratio.

If you want to learn more i see you have a DFI, so here is a link
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/forumdi...s=4d2c3ec452d9bdf000e4fbb549b02692&f=9
There are a couple of stickies you should read.

-Chris

 

[evenmore1]

You made a good choice. Be happy with it. No matter what other people say, you should still be quite satisfied with it

Originally posted by: swtethan
you paid $300? could have bought a pentium D for the same price and better performance... sorry to burst your bubble


$600 P-D price cut down to $300

Um....I know that the P-Ds are much cheaper and are good for OC, and that I might get one But the crazy amount of heat produced while OC is NUTS!!! You'd need great water-cooling for that! On the Intel side you can get an 940 for $50 less, though the expensive mobo that the Intel needs would even the price.

So the 940 may have been better, but the X2 3800+ definetly is a great CPU. As long as there is a huge difference in performance from you previous system, that's all that matters right? Because I know after I upgrade my clunker, I'll be very VERY happy with the performance difference

 

[msi1337]

after running some benchmarks, the cpu and mem are great.. I will try the O/C advice Lord banshee gave in a second..however, I wasnt too impressed with SLI with the (2) 6600gt cards, so I think I am gonna ebay them and just get one better card...any recommendations for a $200 video card pci-e?

 

[EffeX]

7600GT or stretch for a 7900GT.

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: evenmore1
You made a good choice. Be happy with it. No matter what other people say, you should still be quite satisfied with it

Originally posted by: swtethan
you paid $300? could have bought a pentium D for the same price and better performance... sorry to burst your bubble


$600 P-D price cut down to $300

Um....I know that the P-Ds are much cheaper and are good for OC, and that I might get one But the crazy amount of heat produced while OC is NUTS!!! You'd need great water-cooling for that! On the Intel side you can get an 940 for $50 less, though the expensive mobo that the Intel needs would even the price.

So the 940 may have been better, but the X2 3800+ definetly is a great CPU. As long as there is a huge difference in performance from you previous system, that's all that matters right? Because I know after I upgrade my clunker, I'll be very VERY happy with the performance difference

where are these expensive motherboards? show me

 

[Lord Banshee]

Originally posted by: EffeX
7600GT or stretch for a 7900GT.

I agree

 

[Canterwood]

With Conroe just around the corner, you probably went back to AMD at just the wrong time.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Canterwood
With Conroe just around the corner, you probably went back to AMD at just the wrong time.

That is still months out. July at the earliest, but supply may not be there until Sept some say. But when it is available, I will probably have one in addition to my fleet.

The X2 3800 is a great processor, I know I have 3. It blows away the 805@3.5 and the 820 (now stuck at 3.0)

 

[AkumaX]

Originally posted by: swtethan
you paid $300? could have bought a pentium D for the same price and better performance... sorry to burst your bubble


$600 P-D price cut down to $300

. . .

please justify this, i'd want to hear your reasoning...

having already owned a 820 @ 3.3ghz, 50c idle and 72c load with a Big Typhoon, i think the summer temps would definitely kill this 'deal', and if you really feel comfortable about having cpus this high in temp...

 

[msi1337]

I bit the bullet and ordered This MSI x1800xt 512mb video card

I figured if I am gonna sell my 6600gt's I might as well get something worthwhile in return.

also, I got the system up to 2400mhz no problem at stock voltage... however when I ran prime it crashed on blend test... even though temps were at 32'

I think I had a setting wrong...still checking... I didnt buy this system to overclock it anyways..but maybe a nice 300-400 boost would be alright

 

[Absolute0]

Yeah Conroe isn't out yet, 3800+ X2s are still nice... specially clocked past 2.8 GHz

 

[Lord Banshee]

what is your memory running at?

Blend mode test ram just as much as CPU.

Was this Dual Prime?

Set to 1.45v and try again.

So did you set the HT LDT Ratio what ever it is called to 4x (or 800Mhz) ?

 

[msi1337]

yes, I set 4x, 240, memory at 5/6, stock voltage

double prime both running blend test... failed after about 2 mins

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: AkumaX

Originally posted by: swtethan
you paid $300? could have bought a pentium D for the same price and better performance... sorry to burst your bubble


$600 P-D price cut down to $300

. . .

please justify this, i'd want to hear your reasoning...

having already owned a 820 @ 3.3ghz, 50c idle and 72c load with a Big Typhoon, i think the summer temps would definitely kill this 'deal', and if you really feel comfortable about having cpus this high in temp...

buy a 950 @3.5ghz stock for $300 and you wont have those kinds of temps with a nice heatsink

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: swtethan

Originally posted by: AkumaX

Originally posted by: swtethan
you paid $300? could have bought a pentium D for the same price and better performance... sorry to burst your bubble


$600 P-D price cut down to $300

. . .

please justify this, i'd want to hear your reasoning...

having already owned a 820 @ 3.3ghz, 50c idle and 72c load with a Big Typhoon, i think the summer temps would definitely kill this 'deal', and if you really feel comfortable about having cpus this high in temp...

buy a 950 @3.5ghz stock for $300 and you wont be feeling those temps

Why get a 950 for $300, when you can get an X2 3800 and it will almost equal the 950 at stock, and easily OC to 2.5 and beat the OC'ed 950, and still produce less heat.